


One Good Hit- Pidge & Internal Bleeding

by the_sinnamon_roll_writes



Series: Bad Things Happen [22]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: He needs more love, Hurt Pidge | Katie Holt, I love my big badass softie, Pidge | Katie Holt Angst, Pidge | Katie Holt Whump, Protective Team, again it's not seriously violent, but Pidge gets thrown around and hurt so the violence tag gets put in, he's got a big scene w/ lance coming up in another work so keep an eye out for that, hunk to the rescue again!, i should've had this up days ago I'm just terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24730537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_sinnamon_roll_writes/pseuds/the_sinnamon_roll_writes
Summary: A shield can only take so much damage, even if it is the shield of a kick-ass space robot. And when a shield breaks, people can get hurt.This was a request! I’m not sure if people are just desperate for some hurt Pidge, or if it’s just my specific brand of hurt Pidge that you like, but either way, I am extremely flattered by the amount of requests I’ve gotten for her!
Series: Bad Things Happen [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1212720
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	One Good Hit- Pidge & Internal Bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> I do wanna say that internal bleeding is one medical malady that I don’t have much experience with, despite having spent a good chunk of my childhood in hospitals and having multiple people in my family work in the health field. So while I did my best with the causes and symptoms and research and all that jazz, just know that I’m not a professional and it’s almost certainly not entirely accurate!

Pidge liked being able to keep the others safe whenever she could. She was the shield of Voltron, and she was always thrilled to hear someone calling for her shield, to know that she was doing her part to protect her team. When she wasn’t in Green, she was small, and usually not quite enough to protect the other Paladins in a fight. Not compared to Shiro or Keith or Hunk, with their larger frames and greater muscle mass. When it came to groundwork, she was generally the one doing the actual work while the others made sure no one would interrupt her. 

That all changed when she was in her Lion. In the Green Lion, Pidge was a shield and she protected the rest of her team. 

But shields could break. All it took was one wrong hit. 

•••

It had been quite some time since they’d been faced with a robeast. They had hoped that Haggar had gotten the memo that they simply weren’t doing what they were meant to do. 

Like the other ones, this one was huge, far taller than any skyscraper down in the city below them. If it weren’t for the fact that it was currently trying to kill them, Pidge would’ve loved to get her hands on it and take it apart. Just delve inside and figure out what made it tick. Maybe once they defeated it, she could get close enough to do a bit of studying. She hated to admit it, but she was incredibly jealous of how much more advanced the Galra were. It wasn’t fair. The Alteans had had some incredible technology, but the Galra had been just as advanced as the Alteans when they destroyed Altea. And they’d had ten thousand years to expand upon it. It was... magnificent. Annoying, and more than a little inconvenient. But magnificent nonetheless. 

At least, that’s what she was thinking before it landed yet another blow against them. She had lost track of how many times they’d been struck. It did no good counting- they were engaging in their tried-and-true tactic of simply taking a beating until one of them noticed a weakness that could be exploited. 

Voltron stumbled backwards underneath the force of the blow, Keith and Pidge both swinging wildly in their Lions in an attempt to maintain balance. It was a bit nauseating, but they managed to remain upright. Neither felt the urge to complain about it- the arms of Voltron weren’t incredibly whiny people. Keith had an unusually high pain tolerance, and Pidge had a stubborn determination to keep up with the rest of the team.

The next shot the monster got in shook the Green Lion hard enough to give Pidge whiplash. To her horror, when she looked back up, she saw a warning on her screen: SHIELD DAMAGED, WORKING AT 15%. The shield wouldn’t last another hit. It was just a deadweight, slowing them down. Frantically, Pidge unhooked herself from her chair to stand up and reach to disengage the shield. 

But before she could hit it, the robeast struck one more time, catching them all off guard. Once again, it hit the Green Lion’s shield head-on shaking the entire left side of Voltron violently. 

The shield shattered. 

Pidge was pitched off of her feet as her Lion flew haphazardly back and forth in an attempt to regain balance. She had been thrown against walls plenty of times. But being flung all around the cockpit of a Lion was a very different experience. There was no stopping after hitting just one wall. The spinning and jerking had her slamming into walls, her chair, and command boards. At several points, she was convinced she had hit the ceiling. 

Then the Lion finally stopped moving, and she tried to breathe a heavy sigh of relief when she landed hard on the floor. The only problem was that the wind had been knocked out of her, and she was having trouble dragging in enough oxygen to satisfy her body’s needs, let alone waste it on a _sigh._

Very dimly, she was aware that she should be incredibly grateful that she was wearing her helmet. 

She needed to get back up and in control of her Lion. Voltron couldn’t work without every Paladin participating. Despite the ache that came along with the space equivalent of being rolled down a hill in a barrel, Pidge forced herself to stand up to get to her chair. 

Almost immediately after moving, the pain spiked, and Pidge doubled over where she was standing. Her vision began to swim, and she inadvertently dropped back down to her knees with a whimper. Her stomach and chest hurt terribly, and when she looked down closer, she was alarmed to see cracks and dents running through her breastplate and creeping around the back. How was it that her armor could handle the beatings it took in fist fights, but not being thrown around in a Lion? Pidge thought about how, in the past, she’d noticed that her armor tended to... fluctuate in its rigidity, depending on where she was. Her first (and only) theory had been that perhaps the Alteans who had created the armor had somehow designed it to relax in the Lions for maneuverability. If they were able to create clothes that could change size when the wearer changed size, it seemed entirely plausible. And it made sense- it’s what she would’ve done if she had designed it. A strong, hard shell would be better for fighting hand-to-hand, but when one was piloting a ship, it was best not to have anything impeding on one’s movement. 

(She had once asked Allura about it. The princess had replied that she wasn’t sure, and that Coran would be able to give her a more detailed answer. As curious as she’d been, Pidge hadn’t been overly keen on engaging the elder Altean on such a trivial matter. It was something that she could test and figure out herself once she got around to it. She’d just never gotten around to it.)

On some distant level, Pidge was aware that she was losing focus. Unfortunately, she was having a hard time caring about that while her torso felt like it was aflame. She wanted to take her armor off entirely to try and take a look at the damage, but she had just enough presence of mind to know that she would want whatever padding she could get in case it happened again. Unless the armor had gotten too cracked- would it be enough to stab her? How ironic would _that_ be, to be stabbed by the thing that was meant to _keep_ you from being stabbed? Perhaps that warranted taking it off. 

Pidge had all but forgotten that they were in the middle of a fight as she started wiggling out of her damaged armor. There was a nagging in the back of her head that was telling her to check back into the situation at hand, but the main thought in her mind was _‘gosh I’d really rather not have to pull shards of whatever the hell our armor is made of out of my very tender skin. That doesn’t sound like very much fun at all.’_ To her confusion (and deep down, concern) the simple act of unhooking all the points where her armor connected left her winded and lightheaded. 

The winded part she could understand- her chest felt like it had been hit with a tree trunk. No doubt she had a few bruised or broken ribs that would make breathing a little uncomfortable for a bit. Or a lot uncomfortable. Or even difficult, she realized, with mild alarm. Each inhale sent a spike of pain through her chest, and she had to fight the urge to cough. 

It was the lightheadedness that really worried her. She shouldn’t be lightheaded from a few bumps and bruises. But it was getting hard to think now, and that frightened her. She was starting to see double, and she reached up numbly to jerk her helmet off. 

(The tiny voice in the back of her head was _screaming_ at her to put it back on, but honestly, she could hardly hear it by now.)

Her hands gingerly felt at her temples, but she was surprised to feel no lumps or cuts. _‘Because I was wearing a helmet.’_ But that didn’t mean her brain couldn’t be jostled around in her skull. Her helmet may have kept her from hitting her bare head on every surface in her Lion, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten any sort of head injury- it just meant her skull was still in the correct number of parts and not cracked like an egg. Instead of striking her head on hard metal repeatedly, it had simply been scrambled around in her helmet after being thrown around so violently. The severe whiplash alone was enough to throw anyone off their game. God only knew what sort of damage her brain had sustained. She had to have at least a concussion. And if any of the numerous blood vessels that oxygenated her brain were damaged, then she could be in much more serious trouble very soon. 

The thought alone made her nauseous. Her mind drifted off to those old “this is your brain on drugs” commercials with the scrambled eggs, and absurd laughter bubbled up out of her at the image of a scrambled brain. It cut off almost immediately when the motion sent fire shooting through her lungs. 

Pidge whimpered as the pounding in her skull continued to grow worse and worse until it was all she could focus on. Her vision was starting to go black around the edges, and with the way she was feeling, she was more than happy to let herself pass out. 

(The tiny voice in the back of her head had fallen completely silent. If it hadn’t, it likely would’ve pitched quite the fit over losing consciousness.)

•••

Everyone was reeling from the last blow- it was nearly impossible to differentiate one ache from another. The shield had been broken, and that meant they needed to go on the offense quickly if they were to stand any chance of winning this fight. 

Shiro, of course, was the first to shake himself back into full awareness, and as usual, he was fully prepared to jump back in. “Keith, form sword!”

The Red Paladin had been waiting for the order since before their hit. Immediately, Keith was shoving his bayard into the slot and anticipating the brief moment of increased connection with Pidge that always came when their Lions came together to form the sword. 

It never came. 

Panic surged through Keith- he was the first to realize that they hadn’t heard anything from Pidge since before she’d taken that hit. Since the _shield_ had taken the hit that broke it- the shield had protected her though, right? They would know if it hadn’t, right? There had to be a perfectly good reason why the Green Lion was dangling lifelessly to the side. 

Right?

“Pidge? Pidge, are you okay? That was a hard hit you just took, is your Lion working?” Keith asked, alerting the others to the situation as well. There was a brief moment of quiet as the realization that _Pidge hadn’t replied_ sank in. In that same moment, they all realized that Pidge’s presence was... different than everyone else’s. Quieter. More muted, somehow. Forming Voltron came with an increased intensity in the mental link that had first appeared the moment they started flying their Lions. It had been strange, at first, sharing emotions and sensations with the others, but they had grown used to it rather quickly. Now it was comforting- none of them felt any of the isolation that had plagued their first few weeks in space. 

It did have some drawbacks though. Like the unpleasant sensation that came when one of them was injured. Feeling the life force weaken as the body started spending as much energy as it could on healing itself... it was terrifying. The first time it had happened was to Lance, and it had sent everyone into such a frenzy that they’d ended up knocking him to the floor and caused him to hit his head. Needless to say, that made it even worse.

They’d since gotten better at handling it.

Unless it was their little sister. 

Unless they were in Voltron and couldn’t reach her. 

Unless they were in the middle of an incredibly dangerous fight and stuck without any means of defense. 

The Green Lion still hadn’t moved. 

Panic began to set in as they all realized the implications of that. Four voices started calling out in tandem for Pidge, each one anxious and afraid. It only got worse when she didn’t answer. 

_“Alright, let’s split up- Lance, Keith and I will draw its fire and hold it off. Hunk I want you to try and contact Pidge. Figure out what’s going on with her Lion, alright?”_

“Roger that, Shiro,” Hunk said immediately. If he’d thought too hard about it, he might’ve been offended that he hadn’t been selected to go fight as well, but he was so concerned for Pidge that it didn’t even cross his mind. 

As soon as they were apart, the Green Lion fell. 

And her Paladin fell with her. 

•••

The violent jolt that came with her surroundings crashing into something was enough to rouse Pidge. She was still woozy- the only thing she was really aware of was the full-body ache and that she was inside her Lion. Doing her best to ignore the ringing in her ears, Pidge forced herself up to her feet, wincing when she felt a wave of nausea rush over her. Determination to figure out what was going on fueled her to push past the fog in her head and outside of Green. 

She stumbled out of the Green Lion in time to watch as Shiro, Lance, and Keith flew off, luring the giant robeast away from her location. _‘Oh right, we were fighting that. That’s why I was in Green.’_

In a daze, Pidge turned back around. Her team needed her- she should- she should- 

Pidge’s knees hit the ground once again, and the world began to slide back out of focus. She trembled with the exertion it took just to keep herself up on her knees. Her head was still spinning and aching. Somewhere behind her, she heard another _crash,_ then someone yelling. Her first instinct after the crash was to get into the safety of her Lion, but that was overruled when she heard the yelling. She wouldn’t be hearing yelling unless there was someone else outside their Lion. Pidge tried to make herself turn around, but quickly found that her motor skills were severely lacking and only ended up tipping forward and whacking her bare head on the steps into her Lion. 

It turned out she didn’t need to anyway. Within seconds, Hunk was running up to her and kneeling in front of her. He carefully helped her to sit back up, and held her by the shoulders to keep her from falling down again. “Pidge?”

“Mmuh?”

“What happened? Why are you outside your Lion? Where’s your armor?”

She blinked in confusion before looking down at her chest. She almost looked surprised when she saw that she was, indeed, not wearing her armor. “Uh- dunno?”

Hunk had to fight back a groan. He probably should’ve guessed she’d be in rough shape. Unfortunately, she was looking worse than he had been imagining. She couldn’t stay out here. It was too dangerous. “Alright, let’s go Pidge. We’re going back to your Lion and taking care of you, alright? It’s not safe out here.”

It was hard to say if she knew why he was telling her it wasn’t safe, but Hunk appreciated that she took him at his word and nodded. He stood up and pulled her with him. Almost immediately, she was swaying where she stood, and he had to keep an arm around her shoulders to keep her from falling over. 

Getting her back inside was slow going. Pidge was hurt, and until Hunk could understand _where_ she was hurt, he was incredibly anxious to move her. Every instinct he had that had come from years of taking first aid courses told him he shouldn’t be moving a patient, and that he should keep her still until help arrived. 

But he _was_ the help. And he needed to do _something._

“Hunk,” she muttered as she stumbled along, “the fuck is goin’ on?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Hunk grumbled back. He wanted to be upset with her- for taking off her armor, for leaving her Lion and putting herself in danger, for not responding when they were all calling for her- but really couldn’t fault her for any of it. She was hurt and disoriented, and he could hardly blame her for that. None of this was her fault. So his frustration had no target. All he could do was try his best to guide her to the security of her Lion, then back to the care of the Alteans. 

To Hunk’s alarm, once they were about ten steps into her Lion, Pidge started coughing. The violent hacks shook her whole body. But that wasn’t the thing that frightened him. 

No, what frightened him was the blood that came spraying out onto her elbow. For a moment, both Paladins could only stare at it in mingled shock and horror. After several quiet seconds, Pidge blinked and frowned. “That doesn’t look good.”

“No it doesn’t. Okay, lie down here,” Hunk instructed as he helped set her down on the floor. He was incredibly pleased with how steady his voice sounded. “No more moving on your own, got it? Just- stay put until I come get you, can you do that?”

“Do what?” Hunk groaned and swatted her shoulder when she offered up a teasing (if not somewhat scattered) grin. “Don’t worry. Won’t move. Dunno if I can.”

That didn’t make him feel better. 

The lack of a concrete answer to all of this was irritating. All Hunk knew for sure was that the Green Lion had been hit hard enough to break a part of it. Brown eyes traced around the interior of the Lion, searching for clues that might hint at details. It wasn’t long before they landed on Pidge’s discarded armor on the ground. To his surprise, the breastplate was cracked in several places, and had completely caved in in others. If he had to guess, Hunk would’ve said that was why she’d taken it off. 

Anxiously, he glanced at her broken armor and then looked back at her stomach where the suit had ridden up a little. He winced at the severe bruising he could see protruding from the bottom of her stomach. He was sure that there would be more if he were to pull her torn shirt up just a bit. 

To his surprise though, he didn’t see anything that might’ve caused her to pass out. She had a small goose egg on her forehead from when she’d fallen on the steps, but he’d seen her take worse and shake it off. He couldn’t even see any blood anywhere. Only the copious bruising-

Hunk stiffened as memories of the basic health training they’d all been required to take at the Garrison came back to him. A bruise was a type of hematoma. Blood pooling beneath the skin. Just because there wasn’t blood he could see didn’t mean she wasn’t bleeding. He was focusing too hard on what he could see clearly. 

But there were plenty of things inside the body that could be causing problems that he had no way of seeing. 

On a whim, Hunk slowly pull her undershirt up to her belly button and gasped at what he saw. Her entire stomach was already spotted with deep purple that disappeared up her chest below her shirt. A quick glance back at the dents in the armor, and the way they lined up with the marks on her chest lent credit to the earlier idea that it was, in fact, the armor that had caused it. 

How had he not thought of internal bleeding sooner? The disorientation definitely pointed towards a head injury, and she had been coughing up blood for fu- for goodness sake. 

He was out of his depth now. 

The bruising on her stomach was already a lot of blood that was supposed to be in her veins and arteries gathering beneath a thin layer of dermis. And that was only what he could see. He knew perfectly well that plenty of cases of internal bleeding showed few to no visible symptoms. From the way he suspected she’d been thrown around, it was fair to expect that there was some bleeding happening in her brain too. That must’ve been the reason she had passed out. Hunk had a sickening vision of a needle piercing her delicate skin and all that blood starting to leak out of her body in twisting red rivulets. He gulped heavily and steeled himself against the image. His hands fluttered nervously above her as he tried to think of the correct course of action. Hunk remembered almost everything from his first aid training- it was one of the few classroom classes he actually enjoyed. And for internal bleeding, there wasn’t really much for someone who wasn’t a surgeon to do. 

He needed help. Help that he couldn’t get here on the planet. 

Hunk trembled as he stood up and shakily made his way to the Green Lion’s pilot seat and sat down. He gazed at the controls, so similar to Yellow’s, but so foreign at the same time. It all felt... lower than he was used to. Smaller. He groaned as he tried moving the parts he used to get Yellow to move and nothing happened. 

He wasn’t the Green Lion’s pilot. It wasn’t going to work for him unless he could convince Green otherwise. 

“Hey- uh, Green. I know I’m not Pidge- I mean duh. You can probably tell that by the everything about me, right?” Hunk felt terribly awkward, like he was introducing himself to a group of judgemental strangers. “But I do pilot the Yellow Lion! So, y’know, I’m pretty close with Pidge! And listen, she’s in rough shape right now. You might’ve picked that up. So do you think you could take us back to the Castle?”

Nothing. Hunk was starting to get frustrated again, and he felt more than a little stupid for all this. 

“Look. Green, I know you took a few hard hits too, but if you can just tough it out and get us back, we can get both of you fixed up. I don’t wanna move her more than I have to, that could just make things worse. But to do that, I really need your help. _Pidge_ needs your help. _Please,_ Green, I- I don’t want to lose anyone out here.” Hunk furiously wiped his face where his cheeks had grown mysteriously wet. For a moment, he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to carry Pidge all the way back to his Lion, despite all of his first aid training telling him to keep her from moving as much as he could until he could get her more professional help. 

But then he heard a low rumble, and a mechanical whir that told him a Lion was powering up. To his shock and delight, the command board for the Green Lion lit up dimly, and he felt the ship around him start to move. His heart grew as they rose into the air and shot off away from the planet. 

The Green Lion felt odd to drive after so long piloting Yellow. It was small and quick, and it’s relative lack of armor was slightly unnerving. Hunk was more than grateful that it was mostly flying itself back to safety- there wasn’t much he needed to worry about doing. And it gave him a chance to go sit beside Pidge. He couldn’t do much in the way of fixing her up, but he could certainly offer moral support. She seemed to appreciate him carefully lifting up her head and resting it in his lap. He wasn’t sure if it did much, but he knew that elevation was a small part of the protocol when blood loss was involved. Slowed things down or something. 

The Castle of Lions was hovering just outside of the planet’s atmosphere. The team had agreed that it would be best to keep the castle a fair distance from the fight. From where it was now, it was able to launch its own series of attacks, as well as providing a refuge for when things like this very situation occurred. 

Hunk was cursing himself when they landed and he realized he’d forgotten to get ahold of anyone. There was no one waiting to load Pidge onto a gurney and take the responsibility of moving her from place to place off of his shoulders. 

Well. He could hardly waste time waiting for someone to show up and haul her off to the infirmary- much better to get her there himself and have the others meet them there. Before he carefully scooped her up, Hunk turned on the communications link and broadcasted to the entire castle. All he could think to say was “I need help. Meet me at the infirmary.”

He didn’t receive an answer, but he had to assume they would, because if they didn’t... well, he had no clue how to handle this on his own. He could probably work out how to use the pods, but it would take time that they simply didn’t have. 

So it was to his great relief when he saw Coran and Allura waiting for him anxiously. Pidge had fallen asleep in his arms, so he carefully handed her over to Allura, assuming incorrectly that she would know where Coran wanted her. (He had also chosen to assume that Pidge was sleeping and hadn’t simply passed out again. There were certain lies that he needed to believe to maintain any semblance of composure, and that was one of them.)

Coran surprised them all by not immediately packing her up into a healing pod. Instead, he grabbed a few gadgets and hurriedly ran several quick tests. He was biting his lip as he studied the results and making both Hunk and Allura anxious. Finally, after a few excruciatingly long seconds, he spoke. “She’s lost too much blood,” he said grimly. “Her blood pressure is low. She’ll need a transfusion before she goes in a pod, or else it’ll just think it’s preserving a dead body and not try to heal her. The pods can’t create blood. If my memory serves, none of you have an O negative blood type, correct?”

When Hunk didn’t answer, Coran nodded to himself and walked quickly to one of the many cabinets spread around the room. When he opened it, it revealed to be full of several bags of refrigerated red liquid. 

Blood. 

“Coran, what the heck is that?” Hunk asked, looking just as confused as he was alarmed. 

“It’s blood,” the Altean answered without stopping what he was doing. He was setting up an IV line with one bag simply labeled with a 5. 

“Why do you have blood?”

It was only after he was done sticking the needle into Pidge’s arm that Coran looked up at Hunk and Allura. Trained hands began delivering the blood into Pidge’s body without even having to look at what he was doing. “Well, what do you think I did with the blood you all gave? After Lance’s incident with the pod malfunction, I figured it would be a good idea to have some on hand in case something like that ever happened again. I made sure to get plenty of Pidge’s blood, since she’s a universal donor, and can’t receive any from anyone else. I’ll have to get more from her once she’s all healed up.”

Not for the first time, Hunk was gladdened by Coran’s ability to plan ahead for anything. (He couldn't actually remember giving blood, but he’d rather not think of when that might have happened.) Once one whole bag of her own blood had been administered back into her bloodstream, Pidge was quickly transferred into a pod. No one wanted to waste any time allowing her to lose any more blood than she already had. 

It was always terribly anticlimactic whenever someone was put in a pod. The frantic rush to get them there left everyone with adrenaline pumping through their body that had nowhere to go once there was no longer any danger. The few moments of silence that only came after a group of worried people suddenly had nothing to logically worry about was jarring to say the least. And the jitters never fully went away until whoever was in the pod was out and about. Thankfully Pidge was usually out the fastest as she insisted on being let out as soon as she could be without dying. She always claimed that she was fine with dealing with a bit of pain while she healed if it got her ‘out of those damn torture machines and back into the land of the living’. She would throw a hissy fit if she found out she’d been left in for longer than necessary, so it was usually easiest just to do it her way. 

Hunk sighed heavily. The adrenaline of the last- how long? It felt like it had been hours, but as he went over the timeline in his head, he realized it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes total. Thirty short minutes, and Pidge had almost bled out. That didn’t quite seem real. 

However long it had been, the adrenaline was wearing off. He was just about to sink to the floor himself when he realized that a.) the Yellow Lion was still down on the planet and b.) Shiro, Keith, and Lance were also still down on the planet, presumably still fighting. 

And just like that, the panic was back. Hunk turned to the princess with an anxious expression. “Allura, I need to get back down there and help! But I don’t even have Yellow- the Green Lion brought us back. How am I supposed to-?”

The princess’s eyes widened and she grabbed Hunk’s hand to tug him along behind her. “Come. We can use my hovercraft to get us there- I’ll have to take shelter in the Yellow Lion with you once we arrive. It’ll be risky simply diving down there, I’d rather not tempt fate by flying back up before it’s been defeated.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s fine,” Hunk promised. “We just need to get there.”

“Of course. I’ll fly us down, so don’t you worry about that part. Try to focus on not panicking,” Allura instructed. “The hoverboard can feel very... unsteady.”

“Allura, I’m a fighter pilot. I’m used to plenty of shaking around at this point.”

“If you say so.”

•••

Hunk screamed the entire way down. 

It seemed to be a miracle that he hadn’t made himself throw up from it. Piloting a Lion was one thing- he was in an armored, enclosed space that gave him some sense of security. But on Allura’s hoverboard, they were rocketing toward the ground at breakneck speed and entirely exposed. His mind was racing with all the ways it could go wrong- it was horrifying. Falling to death seemed to be the main one he focused on. 

When they finally landed, his legs were wobbly and Allura had to catch him by the forearm to keep him from stumbling. “That thing-” Hunk paused to swallow down a gag- "is _awful.”_

“Yes, it can be rather unpleasant,” the princess replied with a patient smile. “We really should be taking cover though. That monster is gone now, but it could show up at any moment.”

The Paladin nodded and straightened up. They were only a short ways away from his Lion, and in no time, they were both safe onboard and taking back to the sky. (This time in a much better ship. Hunk was feeling infinitely better.)

Hunk had just gotten his communication line up when he noticed the three other Lions flying right over him- but the robeast was nowhere to be found. “Um, guys? Where is the thing? Are we pulling back?”

_“No, we creamed him! It was totally awesome, Shiro went flying at its back and knocked him forward. Once he was pinned, I used my ice ray to freeze him to the ground, and Keith finished him off by basically melting his head!”_ Lance sounded almost indecently cheerful about having roasted a monster to death, but given that the robeast had managed to wipe out two entire villages before they’d arrived, Hunk didn’t feel too awfully bad for it. 

_“Hunk, is Pidge okay?”_ Shiro asked. _“Head back to the Castle and fill us in.”_

Hunk did just that, flying himself and Allura back and narrating what he had done with Pidge. Allura stepped in at times, mostly to clarify parts of what Coran did, but overall, Hunk had gleaned a fairly comprehensive idea of what had happened. There were a few holes, of course, that Pidge would need to fill in when she was back with them, like why she had removed her armor (Hunk was really stuck on that- what possible purpose could that have served?). But he was confident that she would have a good reason for them all soon enough. 

•••

It turned out he was wrong about that. 

Pidge had come out after only a few hours. Apparently her ruptured veins had healed quickly- and that made some sense. Even though it was dangerous, the actual size of the injury was relatively small. It was practically non-existent compared to getting one’s abdomen sliced open (Shiro) or getting thrown across a room because of an explosion (Lance). 

She stumbled from the pod with a groan as she slowly stretched out. She wasn’t technically fully healed- no doubt her muscles were aching something awful. “Ow. What-” it looked like she was about to ask what happened when her eyes widened as a memory crashed over her. “Green! The shield- my Lion! Is she-?”

“Hey, hey, she’s fine,” Hunk promised. “She actually managed to fly us back to the castle. The shield is going to need some repairs, but everything made it in the end.”

“And you guys- did you manage to take it out?”

“Yup!” Lance chimed in chipperly. “We melted his head!”

“Actually _I_ melted his head after Shiro knocked it down. Lance didn’t really do anything,” Keith said smugly. Before Lance could get very far with his offended sputtering, Pidge turned her attention back to Hunk. She seemed to be calming down with the familiar bickering. A few scant memories were returning slowly, but most of what had happened after getting hit was a blur. 

But she remembered Hunk being there. “So Hunk, what happened while Keith and Shiro were kicking ass?”

Ignoring Lance’s renewed protests, Hunk took a deep breath before speaking. “I’m honestly not totally sure. After your Lion got hit, we got out of Voltron and you and Green crashed down hard on the earth. When I landed after you, you had already stumbled outside for some reason without your armor or helmet on. You didn’t really tell me why you did any of that.”

He paused, and Pidge took it for the question that it was. “I... I was worried my armor would stab me, I remember that. As for why I took my helmet off and left my Lion... I had a head injury?” She shrugged; it was really the best answer she could offer. 

“Huh. Okay. Well, I got you inside and you started coughing blood and passing out on me. I bet you can imagine just how calm and collected I was though.”

“Were you totally panicking?”

“Oh yeah, I was like, thirty seconds from a full blown breakdown. I didn’t want to move you all the way over to Yellow, so I managed to talk Green into taking us back here. Then Coran gave you a blood transfusion and we popped you in a pod!”

Pidge looked over at Coran curiously. “Whose blood did you give me?”

“Your own. Do none of you seriously remember my drawing everyone’s blood? I was sure to get samples from all of you, just to be safe.” 

“Um- I remember you _asking_ if you could draw blood,” Shiro said hesitantly. 

“Well of course I asked. I’m not about to go around taking everyone’s blood without permission! That would just be rude.”

“But I don’t remember you actually doing it though!”

When everyone nodded at Shiro’s words, Coran frowned. “Hmm. Is it normal for humans to forget things that happen when they sleep?”

“You took blood from us when we were _sleeping?”_

“Of course! How the quiznak do you draw blood on Earth then, if not while the subject is asleep and relaxed?” Allura was the only person who seemed totally unaffected by Coran’s words. Every human on board was looking downright disturbed. 

“Do you think next time we could do it while we’re awake, Coran?” Lance asked. “I don’t know why, but the thought of you creeping into my room at night to take my blood is not doing great things for my mental wellbeing.”

“Well, when you put it like that it doesn’t sound great,” Coran admitted. “I seem to recall Keith, at least, having a fear of needles. I’m not sure how the rest of you feel. Doing it while the patient is asleep helps to mitigate that fear as a factor! I suppose if you’d all be more comfortable, we could do it while you’re awake though.”

(Everyone glanced around towards Keith when Coran said his name. He looked horrified beyond all belief.)

Pidge decided she didn’t want to focus too hard on that though. “So, I get hit and thrown around, Green crashes, Hunk saves me, Coran gives me blood. Am I all caught up?”

“Yup!” Hunk replied brightly. “You got the most important part, which is that I saved you.”

She grinned at him and nodded. “I suppose there’s a lesson in there about wearing a seat belt, isn’t there?”

Shiro -who had turned his attention to Allura and was filling her in on some of the details of what had happened- snapped his head over to meet Pidge’s eyes so quickly he nearly gave her whiplash again. “You weren’t wearing your belt?” 

“I can’t reach everything when I have the harness on!”

_“So get a booster seat, you little gremlin!”_ No one could remember a time when Shiro had spoken to Pidge like that, nor would it ever occur again. Their leader looked so far beyond exasperated it was actually borderline hysterical. He was staring at her like she had just said she enjoyed bungee jumping without the bungee. “Didn’t they teach you at the Garrison to stay buckled until the ship is safely landed?”

For her part, Pidge looked properly chastened, if a bit taken aback. She looked like she was biting back a protest to the idea of a booster seat, but she seemed to recognize that there was some validity to what he was saying. She’d gotten in trouble more than once for risking getting out of her chair to do something- she was just so _short,_ and most of the universe was built for tall beings. So she got used to climbing and reaching. It was just a short person’s cross to bear. 

However, Shiro did have a point. Clearly getting out of her seat to do something while they were fighting in Voltron wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. Perhaps it was time she tried to figure something out to help her do her job without being pitched around like a baseball. 

Just as long as it wasn’t a booster seat.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all I got 3 more to post, and I'm done with my card! All three are in various stages of being complete, and one of them is gonna be divided up into two chapters, just so I can get the first part up quicker (hopefully). I reeeallllly hope to have one or two of them up in the next few days, but honestly I'm terrible 
> 
> I really hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during these protests and with the covid-19 pandemic. It's scary times. Make sure to take care of yourselves, dears! You can't do anything if you've burned yourself out, so make sure to practice some self-love every now and then.
> 
> Kudos stroke my ego, and comments are reread when I feel negatively towards what I'm writing. As always, my inbox is always open right over [here!](https://the-sinnamon-roll-writes.tumblr.com/)


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